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Fashionable pedestrians

Pedestrians in downtown Los Angeles in the early 1900s with Grand Avenue trolley car in the background.

This photo was published in the Jan. 3, 1950, Los Angeles Times MidWinter Edition as part of a photographic history of Los Angeles. The accompanied headline announced, “Century’s Early Years Brought Trolleys, Traffic and (Ah!) Fashion.”

The caption under the photo above reported, “Ah, the hustle-bustle of a budding metropolis in the early 1900s.”

This similar photo from the same era was published in the Oct. 22, 2006, Los Angeles Times’ 125th Commemorative Fashion Section. For the special section, Otis College of Art and Design instructors Eddie Bledsoe and Diane Sisko commented on fashion in different eras. The accompanying text for this image reported:

1910s ladies donned their finest even to ride the streetcar. This woman is wearing a matinee or picture hat, headgear so large that “it framed your face like picture frame,” Bledsoe says. The furry hand-warmer, a 16th century conceit, ended up as a status symbol for socialites, who, though rich, still took public transportation.